ELDER JEFF DESPAIN

Monday, October 31, 2011

The future father and mother in law of Rebecca Sellars were at church yesterday!!! Haha, small world!!! They are the Grahams from Orange County, CA. That was way neat, I told them that my mom was Rebecca's YW President, and now they are going to ask her! Way cool! (We love the Sellars family! We have known them for years and were able to be in the same ward with them for a while a few years ago. I was a YW leader for their two youngest girls Elizabeth and Rebecca. What wonderful girls! I love them both! Just got an invitation to Rebecca's bridal shower a few days ago. Fun!)(We asked if Halloween is celebrated in Aruba.) Haha, this whole weekend is like a party here, but just normal for us. But today was awesome, we ate some gigantic crepes at a restaurant this morning, then we went with President Buckley and played golf for P-day!!! It was awesome!!

The Queen of Holland visited Aruba this week, and we got a picture of her, she is the lady in the green in the picture that I attached. (Pictures will be on the blog tonight.) She had two appearances so we went to both of those and tried to hand out Books of Mormon and pamphlets, but everyone was pretty focused on her visit so we only got to hand out a few pamphlets.
Thanks Mom, haha, I try my best, but I've got a lot of imperfections too. I hope that I actually did something of worth for the Lee's, but we're going to try to keep in contact with them now. (The Lees are the senior couple serving on the island of Bonaire right now. They send letters home to their grown children, one of which is the sister of a good friend of ours. Our friend forwarded this weeks letter from the Lees to us because they mentioned in their letter to their family how much they appreciate Elder DeSpain and him being concerned about them and checking on them. We shared their kind words with Jeff and he is responding to that here.)
Victor was interviewed, and he is all good to go for this weekend for his baptism. What blessing that will be for me from the Lord, a baptism in my last week!

We finally had the week that I feel like we have been working for this whole transfer. We've been trying our hardest this transfer, but we just hadn't been seeing the success in the numbers. But, we finally had a good week numbers wise, and now it's just a matter of continuing to help people come to church and trying to set baptismal dates with people. This will be my last week in Aruba, and it's going to be hard to leave. I have loved every day of this wonderful blessing the Lord has given me to be able to serve here in Aruba. I am so grateful for the once in a lifetime opportunity that I was given to be able to wake up every day for six months in paradise!

It has been such a learning experience for me on my mission to see that the Lord will help us through our trials, but that doesn't mean that we won't have trials. That doesn't mean that our trials will necessarily be easy either. It's been such a marvelous experience for me to see that as long as I trust in the Lord, everything will work together for my own good. The Lord will walk beside me and share my burden, but He has helped me so much by not removing my burdens completely off of my back. I read an interesting Liahona article that said the same thing. Sometimes the Lord doesn't take the burden off our backs, but instead He makes our backs stronger to carry the burden. But one thing that I know is that He always carries the burden with us. We cannot descend to a low enough point in our lives to be beyond the reach of His infinite love. I testify that He always knows exactly how we feel, and that He will always share our burden with us, and help us walk to relief. How grateful I am for His infinite Atonement.

I love you all and am so grateful for all of your support. Keep up the fantastic work! And keep me updated on my teams! I tell you what, I wouldn't be surprised if I never miss another ASU game in my life after I get home!

The only items that are allowed to be sent through the pouch mail system are postcards and letters that are single sheet, folded into three-panels, and taped at the top only (no envelopes).
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You can use dearelder.com.....

They will print your letter and deliver it to Elder DeSpain at no charge! Just choose Dominican Republic Santo Domingo East Mission and click on "Write a Letter".
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Packages should be sent to the following Miami Florida Address: